Bujo – Burger Joint

The burger bonanza is legit! The amount of eateries in Dublin offering this sacred institution is verging on the hundreds and the search for the best burger is ON! There are a few top guns in this arena but one newcomer is slowly but surely rising to the top. Enter Bujo, short for Burger Joint. This hidden gem in Sandymount is contributing to the little village’s rising popularity. To all my burger lovers, it’s time to flock to this joint!

According to the legendary Anthony Bourdain “Good food is very often, even most often, simple food” and by god do Bujo go by that motto. The driving force behind Dublin’s critically acclaimed burger is Culinary Director and avid food lover Grainne O’Keefe. Her preference for food is “seasonal simple dishes cooked well”. Why such a limited menu at Bujo you may ask? Because the food you’re consuming is “led by what the farmers and producers have at the time”. You’re getting the best of the best here!

The Bujo Burger

The Food

The handheld nature of a burger is both glorious and natural and the holy grail of sandwiches, the Bujo burger, comes in at 8.5/10 on my burgometer. To appreciate this rating I say let’s strip it down to the raw materials.

The BuJo Burger: Think quality grass-fed, rich and savoury beef (from a single farm in Co. Cork) sliced into two thin patties, chargrilled over flame in its fat and juices. Melted creamy cheddar draping around it like a cloak. Glistening beef tomatoes and sharp white onion on top all squashed into a warm embrace of a lightly toasted buttery brioche bun. The burger is an umami bomb dripping with greasy juices and tucked into a bun that absorbs them without falling into soggy abandonment.

The Bujo Burger

The Special: The bia burger with two patties, smoked bacon (sweet, salty and the best I’ve come across!), creamy cashel blue, sweet caramelised red onion and white truffle mayo. While I preferred the regular this was YUM!

The Special

The fries: Crinkle cut fries that is, the salted and rosemary kind. Golden brown, crunchy and light with enough salt to have you licking your fingers!

Crinkle cut fries

Dessert: Strawberry shortcake. This was the real deal! Ice cream produced from one particular herd of cows on a farm in Co. Wexford. Real strawberries, real shortcake and big enough to share! What more could you want?

Reasons to visit:

The person behind the food

Gráinne O’Keefe (Culinary Director of Bujo)

“I’ve always loved cooking and I would watch a lot of cooking programmes and read cookery books when I was younger. And I knew that I wanted to have a job where I would get to cook every day”. Grainne went straight into DIT after school and has been working in the kitchens ever since. “I worked on the menu for 2 years before the opening, visited all of the farmers and producers and ran hundreds of trials for each menu item – beef, buns, bacon, ice cream, potatoes”, ensuring all ingredients and suppliers fitted in with their Sustainability Policy. This place received the highest rating possible from the Sustainable Restaurant Association (think sustainable grass-fed beef, renewable electricity and compostable packaging). Not a whole lot of restaurants can claim that!

“Being a chef is more of a career than a job and I get to work everyday doing something that I enjoy.”

The chef’s favourite: “If I were to go into BuJo now, I’d order a bacon cheeseburger (double) with panko pickles, sriracha fries and salted caramel and apple pie milk shake. We also have some great beers from Wicklow Wolf and some lovely wines on tap too”.

The Special

**Food for thought:

Why is it called a hamburger when it’s made from beef? Because it was invented by a German immigrant in the US who put a hamburg steak between two slices of bread.

A McDonald’s burger won’t rot after 1-2 years because low moisture and dehydration can turn it into beef jerky

The reason burgers look so juicy on TV ads is because they are undercooked

In 2000, Kim Jong-un’s father said that he created the hamburgeror as he dubbed it “double bread with meat”